Placing applications at the core of digital transformation

Andrew Carr at Camwood explains why business leaders should put applications at the heart of their digital acceleration plans

 

The global enterprise application market still shows robust growth. According to Allied Market Research, the market was valued at $238.36 billion in 2020 and is projected to reach $527.40 billion by 2030, growing at a CAGR of 8.2% from 2021 to 2030. 

 

Yet the way applications are used and viewed within business needs improvement. Business leaders often dismiss them as intensely technical, rather than engaging with them from the start of any digital acceleration project. The responsibility for applications is often handed to the technology team.

 

The reality is that applications are key business assets, the engine driving the organisation forward and fuelling its success. They function as the operational hub of most business processes today, giving features and benefits to users that help them service their customers and deliver a superior experience. As such, it makes sense that they are owned by the business, not the IT team.

 

Applications need to be a primary business process from the word go. After all, the way their lifecycle is managed will be fundamental to the end-user experience and customer satisfaction the business delivers and to whether it is successful in attaining its key operational objectives.

 

Meticulous management is crucial here. If a warehouse manager at an IT equipment rental company did not know where its laptops were located, or whether it had enough iPads in stock to meet demand, it would be a major concern. Yet, applications are often an afterthought and typically get considered, too late in the day or just become one of the IT team’s many priorities.

 

Taking this kind of approach to applications brings risks. If applications are not effectively managed, the business may have multiple versions of each, leading to application bloating and higher support and maintenance costs. There are also likely to be multiple ways applications are delivered to users, resulting in increased security, compliance and governance risk.

 

Another reason applications need to be prioritised in any business change project is to ensure that there are no roadblocks to digitalisation. Take the ‘Windows 10 End of Life’ process. With this approach, there is a 3-year window for businesses to gain an understanding of everything from hardware compliance to compatibility position and application estate.

 

It appears a daunting task. However, the ‘to do’ list can be made to look less difficult (and costs can be minimised) by looking at applications and thinking of them as business assets at the start of the journey.

 

The risks that the business would otherwise run into can be minimised as a result - and the organisation will have greater control over what is being deployed and how.

 

All these are key priorities for the business when it comes to driving through their applications strategy. That is not to say that the IT department does not have a key part to play here, however. In fact, it has a crucial role working for the business, in ensuring that the application’s strategy is securely delivered.

 

A structured approach

Typically on the digital acceleration journey, the first stage of this would be discovery. Businesses need to understand exactly what applications it has in place. It should start by getting a full audit and discovery programme underway to understand what is being used, why, how, where and by which teams.

 

The next stage is to look at standardisation. Here, businesses will need to decide what standards they create for packaging, smoke testing and consistency when deploying applications. The business will also need to keep close controls on what users are allowed to bring into the business. There should be a process of introducing new applications but also of retiring old ones to mitigate the chance of application bloating for example.

 

Looking to the future

Looking to the future, it will be key that applications are not just seen as an element of the IT strategy but as a genuine business asset from the beginning. Many businesses simply focus on whether they are delivering via cloud or on-premises, and what infrastructure they will need to support that programme of change. That’s important but it is not sufficient in isolation.

 

Too many organisations fail to bring applications into the equation until they are at least halfway through transformation projects and in some situations not until towards the end, and that hold-up may lead to a corresponding delay in attaining value from the change programme. It may even end up in that project being considered a failure rather than a success.

 

That’s something every business can avoid simply by ensuring applications are core to any business approach from the outset.

 

Ultimately, if you have a strong application lifecycle management strategy in place and treat applications as genuine business assets, you will be able to de-risk any future transformation processes and ensure you create business value much sooner.

 

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Andrew Carr is Managing Director at Camwood  

 

Main image courtesy of iStockPhoto.com